Dry field hunting

After a few years in Maryland I've returned home to N. Texas and am more than ready for this coming season. I've only duck hunted on small bodies of water around here, but after doing some goose and duck hunting up north I'm wondering how much success folks have down here hunting ducks in dry fields. I am on a lease outside of Dallas that has a couple thousand acres in cultivation with a few decent ponds. My hope is we can have the option of hunting ducks in those fields when they are full of winter oats. Obviously this would require a fair amount scouting but before burning all that gasoline I thought I would ask the audience if dry field hunting is a proven strategy in these parts. Thanks for your thoughts and opinions.

I don't think you're gonna have much luck dry field hunting around there.

I'm no duck expert by any means but in my experience;

water=ducks
no water=a bad hunt

I am going to have to go the other way. The last two years we have been on some late season geese(duck season closed) and had plenty of ducks work our spread. It is hard to give up a day of hunting not really knowing what the results are going to be but we are planning on giving it a whirl a few times this coming year.

Granted we aren't picking a field at random and there were birds already in the area but I think it is going to work out. My experience has always been late in the season so I don't know if it would be worth the effort early in the year. Only one way to find out.

Scouting will be key. Not worth setting up unless there are birds going to the field. I have a winter rye/wheat field that can get loaded up with wigeon. Put a little sheet water on that field and it is really ON, but the water isn't necessary as we have killed a lot of ducks when the field is dry.

Keep your eye on the fields during season, but later in season when the wheat is up good is generally been best in my experience.

Good stuff to know - thanks for sharing. Hopefully there will be a good amount of food on the ground through the winter to pull some in. I'm planning on doing a lot of driving for this as our acreage is spread out over several parcels. In your fields, what time of day are you seeing the best numbers?

I have also seen/ hunted ducks over dry field.

Just gotta make sure they want to be in that field.

I've hunted over peanut fields in the panhandle and had great success with mallards. It's all about the timing. In one day and gone the next. I've never seen that many huge groups of mallards in all my life.

If it is not at least extremely cold or overcast, one or the other, you might as well not even try. If it isn't overcast or extremely cold, the ducks will go out to feed right before shooting light in the morning and right after shooting light in the afternoon. This has been my experience 9/10.

We would sometimes get ducks in the rice fields.

Mainly pintails, and if you had a mojo the teal would buzz it.

Don't see it too much in these parts, but it does happen.

I hunt a large ranch that is planted in winter wheat every year. After a good rain it's darn near impossible to get through the field but it's worth every second if there is a little standing water. We literally had hundreds of wigeon and pintail last year.

Dry cut fields in N tex are good 1/100 hunts now. Maybe back when some peanuts were planted up by the big lake